The Duchess of Cambridge is not for rushing

The Duchess of Cambridge has not yet named the charities that will benefit
from her patronage due to her 'methodical' approach to her royal role, says
her private secretary.

Kate Middleton has not yet decided which charities she will give her support to. Photo: Getty Images

By Tim Walker

7:28AM BST 12 Oct 2011

The delay in naming the charities that will benefit from the patronage of the Duchess of Cambridge has caused concern in some quarters, but her private secretary says it will be worth the wait.

“The Duchess is very keen that she looks closely at everything first,” Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton tells Mandrake at a party held by the Heywood Hill bookshop at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Mayfair.

“She is really doing her homework and being very methodical about it. We are doing everything we can to help her. She wants to make sure that her help goes where it is most needed.”

Love me do

Sir Paul McCartney may have had more pressing matters to attend to after his marriage to Nancy Shevell than turn up for the opening of Backbeat — a musical about the early days of The Beatles — but it still attracted at least one budding musician.

Take a bow, Dominic Cooper. The amiable star of Mamma Mia! admits, though, that his own band has some way to go before it hits the heights of the Fab Four. “It’s a truly appalling band I’m in,” he says. “I’m the lead singer.

“We played the Cutty Sark once and there were three people in the audience.”

The name of the band would appear to be something of a moveable feast. “We’ve been called Zephyr, Rouge and, at one stage, Exits. The terrible names go well with our excruciatingly bad songs.”

Sky’s the limit

If Dr Liam Fox ever decides to give a no-holds-barred television interview about Adam Werritty, his human comfort blanket, I fancy it won’t be with Adam Boulton, the portly political editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News.

When I reported in 2005 how the then single Dr Fox had allowed a male student to sleep off a hangover in his hotel room in Paris, he told the lad he was dreading getting up the next morning.

“I have to do an interview with that f–––––– Adam Boulton of Sky News,” Dr Fox explained.